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Monday, January 30, 2012

Ok so this was an interesting model to paint. Also used the airbrush a ton on it also, which was great to help speed it up.

Quick base coat of the codex gray and stonewall grey. Small hit on the Hydra with the black wash through the airbrush as well, and we were off to a great start. The rest was a mix of washes and some detail works on the faces.

Have to say that the painting side of things this was a decent model to do up. Lots of chances to play with some layers of paints. Overall the model took no more than 4 hrs to paint up, and my buddy is happy with the results.

The only problem that I had with this model was the fact that it took almost as long to assemble as it was to paint. The gaps on it were huge. You can see some of the GS work on its neck even with the layers of paint slathered on it.

Still have another Hydra to assemble, pin, and GS work up. Then I will have to pick another color scheme, similar but different, to this one. Will probably go with a darker scheme overall. Just take the same colors, but add black to them all so that it comes out a bit more.

Oh and the green template that it is standing on is the stand in for the proper base that is not built yet.. haven't create it yet, and it for some reason did not come with one. Even though the site says it should.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Ok so another game in as many months.. actually.. I have probably played more Fantasy games ( tournaments aside ) this year than I have last.. and both were at my place! Wowzers! Even better, is that the Dark Elf player brought his terrain with him, so we had real trees instead of paper saying trees on them, and other real pieces of terrain. Of course, we still improvised with some other aspects like the Brush Restorer bottle as a well, and the boards being without sand or flock on them. But that aside, it was still better, and gave a better impression than the previous game.

So.. why the game? Well quite simply we were all gathered in Istanbul by chance, and since I am in the process of painting the Dark Elf army, it seemed like a good thing to play against them also. Why Chaos Dwarfs though since we do not have a fully painted army of them yet? Well simple answer to that is because we could! And it was a good chance to do another test army with them and see how they do. Also why did we do 3000 points? Well again.. just because we could...

Now what were the armies?

For Chaos Dwarfs we had:

Prophet, lvl 4

Deamonsmith, lvl 1

Castellian BSB

2x 34 Chaos Dwarfs, Hand Weapon and shield, and Full Command

4x 20 Hobgoblins with Bows

2x Deathshriekers

1x Magma Cannon

1x Hell Cannon

1x K'Daai Destoryer

2x 5 Wolf Riders

For the Dark Elfs he had:

Dreadlord on Cold One

Mage Lord, lvl 4

Cauldron of Blood

35 Dark Elf Warriors with Spears, Full Command

15 Dark Elf Warriors with Spears, Full Command

2x 20 Dark Elf Repeater Crossbows, Musicians

10 Cold Ones, Full Command

8 Shades

7 Shades

20 Black Guard, Full Command

33 Executioners, Full Command

5 Harpies

Set up of the board was quite simple, though for some reason we keep rolling for so many pieces of terrain. We had 3 forests, a marsh, 2 hills, 1 building, 1 Dwarf Alehouse, the Wyrding Well, Idol of Gork,

Set up was decent, with my Chaos Dwarfs setting up with the main units sitting in the middle, with the destroyer between them. Archers spread out, deathshriekers to my left, magma to my right, Hell Cannon to my far right, and wolf riders to the left and middle.

Dark Elfs had Repeater Crossbows on the hill to my right, and behind the forest to my left. Black guard on the left, Execuitioners in the building, Cold Ones in the center with the dreadlord inside. Large spearelf unit in the middle, with the Mage, with the smaller one in the rear. Caudron somehow fit in this area also, with the Harpies behind the building.

At first glance it was surprising to see no Hydra, but it was not finished being painted, so that was a plus for me I guess, and a negative for him. Though the dreadlord on Cold One, with the reverse ward save and 2+ armor was going to be a problem.

Normally I would write up a big fancy battle report, and honestly I have tried to do just that, but due to the time it took to play I will just cover off on the highlights ( or low lights if you will ) of the game.

One of the biggest questions we have had since the FAQ came out, was how deadly was the K'Daai Destroyer, and how would it fair against the Dreadlord with reverse ward save, and a magic weapon. Well it just so happens that my opponent did just that, but also put him on a cold one, so that I could not use the Thunderstomp on him also.

This one fight actually took 7 rounds of fighting to conclude, and the K'Daai destroyer did lose in the end, however it was only with the help of the Hex spells that this occurred. The Destroyer was constantly being Hexed with at least a -2 to WS, and a -1 to Toughness. It was in the last combat round that the Destroyer was at -3 T, and basically wiped off the board. He did however help to take out some Cold ones that for some reason decided to join in on the fight. Without the hexes, I do believe that the destroyer would have stuck around for a lot longer, and this would have held up both units for the entire game. Basically a stalemate between them, and just waiting on luck for wounds to go through. The dreadlord did walk/ride away with 2 wounds against it though.

Other things that I have learned is that the Hell Cannon misfire chart is pretty scary. In the second turn, it misfired so nicely, that my Deamonsmith's head exploded due to all mages having to take a miscast roll, and he being the unlucky one. The others were just lucky enough to just kill some of their own troops.

Hobgoblin in groups of 20 with Bows was a pretty good deal. For 100 pts, they were good at harassing the enemy, and dwindled the enemy units a bit. In the future, I might take more in a unit, and put them into horde formation also. To be able to roll more dice per round. Not overly effective, granted, but decent for the small points cost when playing larger games. In this game however, I think I should have replaced one of the archer units with another deathshrieker as they were much more effective especially with such a crowed table.

Chaos Dwarfs vs Black Guard. This was probably the only really good fight that occurred in the game, aside from the dreadlord and destroyer fight. We thought it might be a good match up, as the CD unit was HW/SH, 34 dwarfs strong, with Deamonsmith, and BSB. More ranks, so also stubborn, which in hindsight was not required since they were within 6 inches of the Dwarf Brewhouse, so would have had stubborn anyways. Could have done more damage if I had gone into horde formation like the Blackguard unit had. This fight lasted many rounds, took many strange turns, but in the end, the BGs won, taking both banners with it, but only with a size of 4 or 5 models in the end.

For Warmachines, the Deathshriekers were pretty good. When firing they usually hit their targets, and the magma cannon is a deadly Warmachine indeed. However it blowing up on the second turn did not help me, as it was in the perfect spot to cause some major pain to the Dark Elves had it just gotten that last shot off.

In the end, the Chaos Dwarfs lost once more. And quite badly as well. With only the Cold Ones being completely destroyed in the end, though the Dark Elf army was in shambles as a majority of the units were down to 3-5 models each ( aside from the Executioners who drank from the Wyrding well and got back quite a few people, then getting greedy and becoming stupid for the remainder of the game ).

Things I would have done differently can be seen above, but mostly it would have been to avoid the Dreadlord with the Destroyer, and let it run off killing other targets. Grouping the Warmachines together more, and using the re-roll of the deamonsmith to better effect. Removing a unit of archers and adding another Deathershriker. And playing more aggressively, as this game my guys hardly moved, and this was a completely different play style than I am used to. My Night Goblin army is used to running forward screaming with all its might at the enemy, however this was just not to be this time around.

Oh and in the end, I lost.. I killed only the his Cold Ones.. and severely messed up the rest of his units, but that doesn't count now does it? He in turn pretty much killed everything.. save for the hell cannon which he ran away from cause um.. I guess its scary?

Now some photos of the game..

First turn after the Chaos Dwarfs had begun their movement, and causing some damage with their warmachines.

Another angle of Turn 1..

Turn 2 shot..

Epic fight between Spider Riders pretending to be Wolf Riders hacking down some Shades

Epic fight between K'Daai Destroyer versus Dreadlord. Ararchnarok was the stand in here.. just as scary.

You can see the dwindling of Dark Elfs on the left flank here. As you can see the Black Guards look to be dying nicely, however that also was not to be. Also the Shades are sneaking up on my Deathshriekers.

At first you see lots of Dark Elves in the middle..

.. and then you see that they lost a lot of models. Thank you Deathshriekers!

Wha? Where did the K'Daai Spider go? Oh thats right, he got the beat down from a pansy elf on a lizard..

My causalities.. which was pretty much my entire army.. made the clean up process faster for me :)

Dark Elf dead pool.. a very scary sight, as all those Executioner Swords and Spears.. very pointy line there.

Look.. its a Giant.. Hell Cannon stand in.. and is that 4 Hobgoblins still? Wow.. Chaos Dwarfs did well here..

And that is that.. was hoping for another game, but my other buddy decided he needed to work on Sunday instead of playing a good game of Fantasy!! I mean.. really?? Lame.. oh well.. there is always next time I guess..

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Ok so after a week+ of working on these guys, they are finally finished. Have to say that I am pretty chuffed with how they came out, and thankfully so is the guy who paid me to paint them up! They even died a horrible death already in our game over the weekend! Though I think that was due to their shields not being finished, and thus they went out not fully ready to take on a K'Daai Destroyer!

So.. how do they look?

The riders were quite simple to get completed due to the fact that they are using the same recipes as used on all other models in this army thus far. I even went faster, as I was able to use the Airbrush to do up the silver base coat, and do do the purple base coats on the shields also. This probably cut close to 5 or 6 hours off the total time it would have normally taken me to paint.

* Indecently.. I was able to get the base levels of purple on the 16+ shields, and do the clean up of my Airbrush in the time it took for my buddy Burock over at Garganthar to create one of his new hobgoblin models. Once he has an article up on them, I will link back to it also. *

I think this unit though is probably going to be one heck of a centerpiece, even if the unit itself cannot really line up very well, as seen from the photos below. Hopefully we can figure something out to remedy that when we get to the basing aspect of this army.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Next unit up was the cold ones. Have to say that this unit scared me a bit since I was working on the purples and metals so much that I almost forgot how to paint browns and greens.

Since I got the new airbrush though, I really had the chance to give it a shot on these guys. So with the greens and khaki colors in hand, I went to work on them. In the span of 1.5 hrs, I had the basic green, highlight green, and also the khaki coloring done up. If I had done this by hand, it would have easily taken me 9 hrs or more. And the effect would not have been as good, nor would I have used as little paint as I had.

So from here, I did up the straps in VGC Terra Brown before washing them with GW Sepia and Ogryn. Silver was simple enough, and the spikes/claws were VGC Khaki, VGC Bone highlight, and then GW Delvan Mud washes.

Fully finished up in about 11 hrs in total ( 2 of which was a bust due to the original airbrushing attempts ).

Best to keep this in mind when playing them. Some good pieces of information there, including another reference to the Storm of Magic supplement book from GW. Lammasu's can get some upgrades, and Hell Cannons can get re-rolls from the Deamonsmith.

On top of this, ForgeWorld has also released some new Deamonsmith models.. they are really making it hard not to buy their CD models.. wonder if the wife will accept a second mortgage to get a proper FW CD army going? Mmmm...

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Ok so the next unit up that has FINALLY been completed.. and I highlight the finally bit because they have been on my shelves for well over a year.. apologizes to my mate for holding onto them for so long.. hopefully they were worth the wait..

I am really not into history, especially the English Civil War, but I still find them interesting. Especially the color choices. They would not have been my first choice, and I had to do a bit of customization on the scheme a bit as full yellow ( as outlined on the boxart ) was a bit of an overkill to me. Plus the yellow was a bit more dirty than the boxart also.. as I do not think they would be able to keep them that clean for very long on the field.

So these are the Parliament Cavalry models from Warlord games. Again, great models, if not a bit small ( compared to another major model company ), but the details are nice. Not sure if I will paint the eyes on these ones due to the faces being incredibly small, and not sure if it will be as noticeable as on the infantry which has more crisp features ( upside of being metal I guess ).

The horses were literally done a year ago, so just the riders were done recently. I was holding out to do the yellow with an airbrush, but my new one seems to be stuck in customs still. So didn't want to wait any longer, and really needed a break from the Dark Elf army commission.

For color scheme, I really tried to keep a muted tone throughout, as the yellow was to be the focal point. I think I pulled it off with the darker horses, and clothing accessories on the riders. I tried to keep them contained within Browns, Greys and Blacks mostly.. with the white horse there just to test out my old airbrush before it bite the dust..

Anyways.. onto the pictures..

Not sure what is up next.. but most likely it is more Dark Elfs.. have plenty of them left to paint up :)

Monday, January 16, 2012

So another model/character for the Dark Elfs here. This time the Mantic Twlight Kin Sorceress. The model will be part of the cauldron of blood that we will be converting for this army since we do not like the original cauldron too much.

I have to say, that in the photos from Mantic, this model looks great. Seems to have quite a lot of detail on it, and such great character.

Unfortunately, I must have received a bad casting, as this one had little to no features on the face, and was not as much fun to paint as I was hoping it to be.

I did try my best on it though, and even made the heart on the left hand look like it had been freshly acquired from a poor victim.

As stated the face did not come out all the great. It looks like she is freaking herself out with the heart in her hand, and even in real life the face looks to be too flat in comparison to the rest of the model, or in comparison to the wyches done recently.

The other models that will sit with this one in the cauldron are the Avatar of War Dark Elf Queen models. They look the part of being defenders of this unholy machine, and will get some paint soon enough. Can't wait to work on them.

Friday, January 13, 2012

So I have had some of these Warlord models in my painting queue for longer than I care to really mention. They belong to a good friend of mine who continues to tell me no rush. What that translates to me is that I can procrastinate on them and paint other things. And unfortunately I have been doing just that.. for well over a year.. Not cool..

The guys in red were done about a year ago, and the guys in yellow done just recently.. cannot say that I have improved too much, and that I can also say that I hate the color yellow.. more for painting than the actually color itself.

Some photos..

The Yellow is a base of VGC Earth as a base, and then with VGC Gold Yellow mixed in. Till we got to a pure Gold yellow, with a wash of the mix on top. I had to really play with the yellows here as it was either going to be too bright or too dark.. so the compromise was something in between.

As far as my painting style goes, I deviated from it to make them a bit more exaggerated in the coloring.. to show off the details a bit more. Especially on the pants and jackets. I think it gives it a bit more character, and also when they are lined up on my desk ( and not super enlarged in photos ) they look decent and coherent.

I still need to do the feathers.. but haven't figure out what color yet.

Next up for these guys are 12 of the riders. Horses are almost finished, and have been in that state for quite a while, but the riders are just getting started on.. so hopefully I can get them finished up soon enough.